Category: Discussion (Page 3 of 7)

The Internet Archive has just released a new trove of online content, in the form of what they call The Open Library – 1.2 million ebooks, easily accessible and entirely free. The long-running website is now calling itself the National Emergency Library – and in the COVID-19 environment, with educators from graduate level courses to K-12 teaching online for the first time, the need for course materials and educational content has taken on a new urgency. Correspondingly, news of the Open Library has circulated far beyond the immediate library world, garnering press coverage from Vice, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and more. 

But, is this legal? Vice reports the free books as “controversial” – citing the pushback from some authors and (more vocally) publishers. The Authors Guild calls the site “piracy,” and furthermore “an excuse to push copyright law further out to the edges, and in doing so, harm authors, many of whom are already struggling.” The Association of American Publishers likewise calls the move “aggressive,” and joins the Society of Authors in threats of legal action. 

The Internet Archive has written in response, “This was our dream for the original Internet coming to life: the Library at everyone’s fingertips.” Indeed, the site has grown vastly since 1996, when its main purpose was to archive the internet (or, “world wide web”) – something they achieved and made public through the Wayback Machine. The mission statement is as broad as its collections development, centered around a single, ambitious goal: “to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.” 

So, is this a bold example of 21st century literary piracy, or a publicly responsive invocation of Fair Use? The New Yorker, citing the “sheer pleasure of browsing”, perhaps oversimplifies the case: “Libraries have copyright superpowers that they can use in an emergency.” In what sense, one might ask, is this a library? Users are given the unique opportunity to “sponsor” a book – by a one-time donation, making that book available to additional users. 

Judging from the public response, there is a growing interest in openly-available resources – and it may be more of a challenge to return to the restrictive, traditional boundaries of copyright when the crisis is over. 

Open Access appeared in the news recently, with an endorsement by the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The Alliance includes ten research Universities, mostly located in the Midwest, as well as New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The statement, collectively authored by the Provosts, characterizes academic publishing as “a price-inelastic market, with little relationship between demand and price,” referencing the rapid and continued inflation in journal subscription prices. The statement affirms the importance of openly accessible research, encouraging institutions to “advance more sustainable modes of funding publishing.”

O.E.R. and LGTBQ? A recent article from New America, a “think and action tank,” speculates on the possible benefit of Open Educational Resources (O.E.R.) for LGBTQ students. Noting that LGBTQ students are notoriously under served by the educational system (“never taught material that reflects, represents, or validates their identity”), the author concludes that O.E.R. could theoretically offer solutions to that problem, by offering high-quality, “queer-inclusive” content.

Given that there is currently very little O.E.R. content specifically geared towards queer students/topics in the field, this argument is purely theoretical. Prof. Matt Brim, at the College of Staten Island, challenged his graduate students to seek out such content, with his project Free Queer CUNY. In the absence of openly-licensed Queer Studies materials, his students curated a variety of disparate readings and sources from around the web.

Let’s take a look at the ways O.E.R. have emerged in the news lately. 

• CityTech’s O.E.R. Librarian, Cailean Cooney, was featured in a recent article about online learning. Cooney notes that “faculty are generally very sensitive and aware of our student population,” and that the program is structured to support their needs.

•  Another article from InsideHigherEd posits O.E.R. as an “institutional survival strategy, making the pitch that O.E.R. is a “win-win.”

•  The Justice EReader is a new project developed at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, “offering a collection of key texts on the topic of justice, broadly defined, that functions as an intellectual hub for conversations about justice among undergraduate students and their teachers at the college.” As an O.E.R., this project is freely accessible for widespread use.

If you’re still not clear about the dynamics of O.E.R. in the classroom, check out our previous blog post reflections by O.E.R. Fellows. Also, you can take a look at the O.E.R. developed within the Fellowship at CityTech, here.